


The Truth is Something You Don't Have To Lie About

by dancinbutterfly



Category: The Hour
Genre: 1950s, BBC, Best Friends, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Love, Male-Female Friendship, Marriage, News, No Adultery (but there are complications), Period appropriate misogyny, Pregnancy, Romantic Friendship, Sex, Unplanned Pregnancy, near canon au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 12:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slight AU wherein Bel and Freddie had a rather physically intimate good-bye before he left for his little soul searching trip and Bel finds herself twenty-eight, single, and "in trouble". However, nothing much else is different.  She still has a show to produce, Hector has been late every day for six months, Freddie has a wife, ITV is trying to poach BBC talent, crime in Soho is on the rise, the US wants to put nuclear weapons in Great Britain, and everyone still dislikes Angus McCain. Needless to say, Bel's "little problem" might be the least of the trouble facing the Hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth is Something You Don't Have To Lie About

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voodoochild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/gifts), [sophiahelix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/gifts), [quintenttsy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quintenttsy/gifts).



> Warning: This fic features discussion of abortion and adoption but contains neither.
> 
> History Note: I did the best I could with research. Sputnick 2 was on November 3 of 1957. The NATO summit was December 16-19th of 57. There was Christmas then I suppose New Years and perhaps two or three shows after that. No Je Ne Regrette Rien was written in 1956. Piaf didnt make it famous until '60 but I figure that Lix is ahead of the curve. :D So this what I based my timeline on - the canon only provided these sporadic dates historic dates as it was far less clear than in series one how long this took. 
> 
> Also in the 50s and 60s - women drank and smoked while pregnant and as far as I'm aware based on what I've been told my mother, aunts, and uncles all of whom were born before 1960 - birth was most often undertaken while the woman was under anesthesia, at least to my knowledge. So, these are the bits of knowledge I used to write this. I hope its okay and not too anachronistic. 
> 
> Beta Note: You all have my sincerest apologies for the lack of a beta. Due to the nature of this challenge, I wrote this 6,500+ word monster in one sitting from 4-10am in order to be in on time for Yuletide Madness. As such there was no time to find a beta, let alone go through the beta process. Please forgive me and grant me mercy. I checked it twice and did the best I could. I hope you like it despite the flaws which I am constantly trying to fix for spelling, grammar and continuity. Honestly, its already grown by 200 words from AO3 revisions alone.
> 
> Gift Notes: This is for those I could find who specifically asked for Freddie/Bel in their DYW letter and the fic is marked as such.

Nine months pass between the night Freddie interviews Lord Elms and the morning Randall Brown takes over as the official head of news. Bel does not waddle to his office. She does not. She has been practicing, thank you, and Lix, bless her bloody beautiful brilliant soul, has been a godsend in helping her hide it. Thus far the only people who know are the core group in the office who are loyal to the common goal but Mr. Brown he takes one look at her and says “Miss Rowley. Lovely to meet you. I suppose you’ll be needing a nanny then?”

She does not burst into tears. Her eyes sting a bit; that’s all. She clears her throat. “My mother’s moving in a week before I’m due.”

“Good. Will you be taking the six weeks of leave or will you be needing more?”

She twists her fingers together but she does not look down. She refuses to be ashamed. “Barring complications I hope to be only be gone four.”

“Good. How far along are you?”

“Eight months.” Well, that’s not exactly accurate but she did the research and a full term pregnancy is thirty-nine weeks and that is actually closer to 10 months. Still, it had actually been seven months, two weeks, three days since that slow, sweet, slightly drunk fuck on the floor of Freddie’s living room. He’d kissed her and kissed her and kissed her even though his face was wet, tears in their mouths because his father had only been in the ground for two hours. It was broken, blinding, shatteringly fragile and lovely in its way. Bel had panted and Freddie hand breathed harshly into the skin of her breasts but none of that mattered because neither of them could stop it, could they? 

The article on Clarence Fendly and its fall out took a full month. Freddie’s finger’s stained with graphite and nicotine, bags under his eyes. The arrests and the speedy trial that he’d had the inside track on because Clarence would only talk to him, only answer his questions. Freddie’s and his lawyer’s. It had made him as a journalist even as it ruined him at the BBC and shaken him as a man. 

His father’s death is what broke him in the end, Bel knows. It had been abrupt, talking one minute, gone the next as they sat having dinner together. She’d watched him tear himself apart - wondering if it were real, if it wasn’t just another MI-6 attack until he read the coroner report. A massive stroke was not exactly shadow ops territory - heart attack, suicide, or robbery; that was their game - but it didn’t matter. Malcolm Lyon had still died in Freddie's arms right there in their kitchen.

The morning after they made love, he sat next to her on the floor, naked under a throw, cigarette dangling between his fingers and said “Come with me, Moneypenny.”

“Come with you? Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes. I’m going somewhere. Anywhere that isn’t England. Anywhere that isn’t here.”

Bel could never remember wanting to say yes more. Not to anything. Yet she shook her head and pressed a kiss to his pronounced shoulder blade. “You know I can’t. The Hour - I’m the only thing keeping it afloat.”

“I know,” he agrees, turning his head to kiss the crown of her hair. “Had to ask though didn’t I?” He kissed her again, on the mouth this time, before pulling her across his lap and making love to her again. He’d mouthed his way over eached of her collar bones and she’d ridden him until she’d come, gasping, then more as he kept his hands on her hips, moving her forward. That was Freddie. Always helping her move forward.

None of that felt like a goodbye. Likely because it wasn’t a goodbye, Bel supposed. It was merely an ‘until we meet again.’

Then days turned to weeks and weeks turned into two months and suddenly she was a girl in trouble which was ridiculous. She was twenty-eight years old, hardly a girl anymore. Bel finds herself in Lix’s office anyway, well past working hours, with all the doors locked.

“Hypothetically, what would you do if you were the first woman producer of a rather important television news program and you found yourself unmarried and pregnant?” she asks.

Lix takes off her glasses. “Oh darling girl. You’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a mess haven’t you? It’s not Hector’s is it?”

She shakes her head. “Freddie.”

Lix’s eyebrows go up. Any moment other than this and Bel would be quite proud. It takes a lot to surprise Lix Storm. She pushes the chair on the other side of her desk out with one foot while she digs in her desk for a bottle and two glasses. “Of course it is and thank God for that. Well,” she says as she pours them each a finger of whiskey, “I’ve no idea as I don’t have all the facts but imagine we’ll be needing all of this,” she holds up the bottle briefly, “And possibly more cigarettes than I’ve on hand.”

“I don’t have time to be a mum.”

“You really dont,” Lix agrees. 

“Besides, I’d be a terrible mother.”

“Most women are, dear. It’s a very well kept secret.”

“And of course, Freddie’s halfway across the bloody world.”

“That he is.”

“So he doesn’t even know. How could he? I just realized last week.”

“Sweetheart, if you just realized, you know there are things that can be done about it. You have options.”

Of course she knows has options. Bel knows that. She had a terrible scare at university when she was nineteen. She went so far as to ask her mother where to go, what to do and her mother had just sighed and given her the name of a doctor who was “very good and very discrete.” 

Thankfully a few days later it proved to be a false alarm but her mother had still petted her hair and given her tips on how to avoid this next time because “You don’t really want to end up like me, do you Bel, love?” It was the one and only time her mother ever acknowledged knowing that no, Bel really didn’t want to be anything like her. 

However, this time that option is no option at all because this baby is Freddie’s baby. This baby could have his bright eyes, hungrily taking in the world around it like it will never see enough no matter how long it has to look. It could have his dark fall of wavy hair that only stays out of his eyes because of entirely too much pomade that makes it look almost greasy at times. It could have his twig-like body that is too skinny both because he has always been thin but also because he often forgets to eat when he’s deep in his own mind and oh, that mind. Their child could have that brilliant, desperate, beautiful mind of his. 

Well, Bel can’t take an option when seeing what that mixed with everything that makes her her could turn out like can she? She’s a journalist. Her curiosity is too strong. She needs to know what Bel Rowley plus Freddie Lyon equals. She simply has to because she’s already enamored with the equations and she’s know that she’ll fall in love with the solution on full sight. 

Naturally Lix can tell all of that just by looking at her. Lix is very good at her job. Bel loves her for it and occasionally hates her for it too. Right now its both. 

“I was in your shoes once, you know. Terribly complicated, the whole thing. No matter what you decide, it follows you so I suggest you be very sure. No je ne regrette rien.” She smiles, “I do love that song. Have you heard it? New out of France. It’s lovely.”

Bel looks up at Lix like a baby duckling waiting to be fed. “What did you decide?”

“Now that I wont tell you,” Lix tells her. “Wont have my life colouring yours.”

“Damnit.”

“Something worth considering is the fact that the BBC is within their rights to fire you, unfortunately,” Lix muses into her whiskey. “The scandal and what it can do to the company alone can get you tossed out on your ear. I imagine McCain will have a party when he hears.”

“I know.”

“It’ll all depend on who they get as the new head of news in the end.”

“And there’s still no word?”

“Silent as the grave I’m afraid. You do know how the Powers That Be love to keep us peasants in the dark.”

She is right of course. Lix was almost always right. Bel made her head of Foreign Affairs for just this reason. Bel holds out her glass for more and Lix obligingly pours.

~*~*~

Lix is certainly right about the new Head of News when he finally arrived. Randall Brown was unknown, unpredictable, and unprecedented and when he brought in Freddie, Freddie who sent her two letters - one from San Diego and one from New York neither she could answer by the time she received them - he turned out to be unexpected as well.

Unexpected. Yes. That was a brilliant word. Freddie had stared at her, stared and stared for the longest time in the utter silence of the staff meeting. Bel stared back, watching his eyes dart up and down her body even as Sissy jumped up to hug him and Randall continues to speak as if Bels world hadn’t just shifted on its axis and she was falling off it in to space with that poor dog in Sputnik. 

Mr. Brown pulls her out of the room a moment later and she is so grateful she could collapse. She’s furious, furious that he would do this to her, move without consulting her - the producer of the show - but also because she has absolutely no doubt that he knows who Freddie is to her. He’s a journalist and this is a very small team. Everyone knows everything. Secrets are not kept for very long on the hour. The affair with Hector proved that rather soundly. 

“Are you absolutely insane?” Bel demands and as her voice only shakes a little, she’s only a little humiliated. Hormones. It’s all just hormones. She doesn’t let anyone else mention them. She nearly gutted Isaac for blaming her frustration with some of his early work on the Home Affairs desk on her condition but she finds she’s using them to forgive herself inside her own mind quite a bit this trimester.

“Mr Lyon was one of the conditions of my joining this team.”

“You knew. You knew last night. A new cohost and you announce it in front of my whole team. Do you see how that undermines me?” She demands, feeling steadier because now she is well and truly livid and there’s nothing hormonal about it. 

This is pure anger and frustration with nothing to do with Freddie (who is right outside the door, at this very moment, knowing that she is in fact, carrying his baby, in the space just beneath her heart) beyond the fact that Brown sprang his being cohost on her. How dare he? How dare this man, who has no idea what her team has been through in the last year, sweep in, and he’s undercut all the work she’s put into holding the hour together and not to mention the way he’s reinforcing the glass ceiling she’s been bumping her skull against her whole bloody life. 

“Everything that I have done here in the last nine months and you have made me look ridiculous."

“Hold your fire.”

Bel barely stop herself shouting. It comes out louder than it should as it is. “What fire?” 

“I had thought this would be welcome news,” Mr. Brown says. There is no mistaking the double meaning there - the intermixing of personal and professional all in one sentence. If Bel were not a professional (which she is, a complete professional) she would reach over her desk and slap him, hard, so hard his glasses would go flying across the room.

“Well it is. I mean, no. Have you even interviewed him for the post?”

“In Paris he was quite convincing, said that his skills had been missed.”

“Paris.” She snaps because Paris. He’d been in Paris and couldn’t even pick up a phone? Paris was only a few hours away. It was nothing and he’d never even tried. 

“Couple months spent in the Bureau, we caught him in his travels. I believe a long stint in America, then Paris, but he was clearly eager to come back.”

“Hector-“

“Will be fired if he opposes. A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services. I presume it’s not his wife who is keeping him this late,” Mr. Brown says, making for the door. He pauses at the door, hand on the knob then turns back to her. 

He is the definition of inscrutable. For a moment, Bel is sure she’s fired. She is positive that this is it, that they’re going to chose Freddie over here and that everything she’s worked for is wasted for a few moments of passion and long held but slightly broken love.

“For what its worth, Miss Rowley,” Mr. Brown says finally, “I was unaware of the extenuating circumstances between you and Mr. Lyon when I hired him for the cohost position. For what it’s also worth, your delicate condition changes nothing.”

Bel sits then. She intended to have this entire conversation standing, an equal to an equal but that knocks the wind from her sails. “What?”

“I expect you both to maintain the working producer/journalist relationship you have. You’re both professionals, and talented ones at that. I do not give compliments often, or lightly but you’re good at what you do and I’ll not have the mere fact that the two of you are having a child together change that working relationship. I have the utmost faith in both of you that you can manage that.” 

He doesn’t wait for her to respond. He opens the door and leaves, closing the door behind him and leaving her breathless. 

~*~*~

“You’ve rearranged.” Freddie has a way of starting conversations in the middle of conversations that Bel grew used to over the years. In the months he was gone but now that he’s back, it won’t take long to get back in the swing. She hopes.”Plants. How very unlike you. 

“Yes. Plants.” Things that grow. Things that needs nurturing. She’s been practicing. Or trying to at least. She’s getting better. 

All right that’s not true. She’s terrible. They’re only doing so well because Sissy thinks they’re lovely and adopted them and comes in to water them every other day out of sheer affection for the plants.

“You had that cactus,” he adds and Bel wishes she was surprised he remembers the stupid cactus from the first year they knew each other. They were in a horrible little basement that their bosses tried to pass off as an office and she kept sticking herself with it. Of course he remembers. “You hated it. You hate plants.” 

“Not now. I even enjoy the cinema alone. A lot less fidgeting and you dont get the annoying commentary on the bus home. What did you write?”

“Interesting stuff on Eisenhower in the aftermath of McCarthy.”

“Really?” 

“Mm.”

“How very 1953.”

“Its usual to say welcome back or some other superlative.” He chides.

“You left.”

“And yet you stayed,” he counters.

They both sound accusatory. Neither is fair. They both knew that they couldn’t, wouldn’t be able to do anything else. But Bel is on tenter hooks, waiting, dying for him to say something, anything, so that she can tell him, answer him, tell him her reasoning or thought or, oh, she doesn’t even know. She just wants him to bring it up. They talk about distance instead, about Paris and his personal quest for his own identity until quiet fills the room. It’s nervous and long because she can’t think of anything but that night, on the floor his lips on her hairline, his skin under hands she says “I still miss your father.”

“Thank you.” He says. He means it and he doesn’t and this is whole affair is one of the biggest cock-ups of her life, it really is. 

“I wrote you a letter from San Diego. And then another from New York,” Freddie says and Bel wants to scream, ‘I know’ because she’s read them so many times she could recite them to him like Keats or e.e. cummings or Dunne. 

She’d lacked the courage to answer, as she lacked the courage now to say ‘the baby is kicking, right now this very instant, if you want to feel you can come over and put your hand on my stomach and feel your child move.’ She’s never been brave when it truly mattered. Instead she is silent and hates herself for it.

So he presses on, glancing at the atom bomb preparedness pamphlet and then on to the possible leads for the week. It’s a desperate relief when Hector bursts in, ragging on Freddie’s new beard and raging over Freddie being cohost and crowing over ITV until he produces a source on the Soho crime story. Suddenly its the three of them, pouring over a story again and all is right with the world.

Up until the moment when Bel realizes that Hector is looking at them, standing with their heads bent together and lets out the most aghast long suffering sigh Bel has ever heard a man make. “Christ, you haven’t said anything, either of you. Honestly, I could bash your heads together. Freddie, good God man, are you really going to stand here and talk about vice crime when you’re staring at the mother of your unborn child?”

Bel presses her hand to her eyebrows against the headache already brewing because Hector. Hector who has been skiving off to god knows where because it’s certainly not work is it and now he’s doing this. They were fine but this? This was, well, not fine but it was close to who they were wasn’t it? And now Hector. Damn the man.

Freddie is actually speechless. Bel doesn’t recall that ever happening, not in all the years she’s known him. “I-“ He tries. “I’m- I was-”

“I mean I know you’re a writer but surely you had to pass basic maths A levels to get into university didn’t you? For God’s sake look at the woman, do the simple addition, and take some responsibility. You’re going to be a father and you’ve only got, what is it Bel, two months?”

“Thank you, Hector,” Bel sighs. “Your input, as ever, is appreciated.”

“You two are going to get a coffee after the conference. No arguments. I’ll moderate if I have to. On the rather short list of things I actually give a damn about you two some how managed to worm your way onto the top five. Six pm? I’ve places to be but I want to get you settled first.”

“We can handle this, Hector,” Freddie practically growls. Bel hates that she finds that attractive. Then again, she’s been finding Ron the boom operator sexy recently so her sexual appetite is likely another lovely pregnancy symptom. Her current reaction is probably a fluke and she is therefore not a particularly good judge of such things at the moment.

Hector looks unconvinced and waits, arms crossed. Apparently, he isn’t going anywhere until there is an actual appointment set. Brilliant.

She drops her hand sighs. “My place. Seven o’clock?” She offers.

“Can’t. Nine, alright?” 

Bel nods, her throat suddenly very dry. “Yes. Nine is fine.”

And the rest of the day? Well, its business as usual. Freddie is brilliant at the hearing. He’s an egotistic prat and she knocks him down a few pegs while giving him the credit he’s due. He pushes her to be greater than she is and does damnit. He always does. She tells him to shave his beard, compliments his suit and he tells her that her hair is different, thicker and darker, which he can’t know is due to the pregnancy hormonal changes but is still nice to hear. 

They’ve both rearranged themselves. Drastically. The talking is going to be interesting. She is terrified but standing awkwardly meeting his eyes, she can tell he is too. It helps.

~*~*~

Freddie arrives at nine with a bottle of vodka, a carton of cigarettes, and a hangdog expression. He makes a beeline for her kitchen, grabs two tea mugs, sets them on her coffee table then drops down on her couch. He pours far too much vodka into each glass the lights a cigarette for each of them, leaving hers burning in the ashtray. He sits back blowing smoke at the ceiling. He looks wrecked, nearly destroyed. Considering the story he got today, even with her circumstance, this is not his typical behavior.

She crosses the room and picks up her cigarette taking a long drag as she watches him smoke up at the ceiling. She doesnt know what he’s looking for but she can wait. When he’s done with the cigarette he drops it in the ashtray and downs the entire mug of vodka he’s poured for himself then lights another.

“Jesus, Freddie slow down,” she says as he stares back up at the cieling.

“You should’ve answered my letters,” he says. “Bel, you should’ve answered them. Just one of them. I wish-“ He closes his eyes tightly. “Bel. Christ, Bel.”

She covers her free hand with his. “I’m here.”

“I’m married,” he chokes out, poison smoke billowing from his mouth with the words.

“Oh.”

“We’ve been married for two months. I met her in Paris.”

“Oh.” She has another sip of vodka. The painful burn helps remind her that this is really happening because the physical hurt helps with the ache inside that is clawing at her.

“Her name’s Camille,” Freddie says as if that makes any difference, as if she gives a single damn what his wife’s name is, as if she will ever care about the name of the woman who married (oh, God, married) her best friend, the father of her child, the man she loves. 

Bel laughs, a little hysterically. “Like the film with, with Greta Garbo and um-“

“Robert Taylor.”

“Married.” She says again because of all the things in all possible things this is not something she ever could’ve imagined. “Well. Congratulations.”

“Moneypenny, I’m- She’s lovely. She’s wonderful. She’s- oh god, she’s my bloody wife and you’re-“

“Pregnant.”

“That isn’t what I was going to say.”

“What were you going to say then?” Bel asks her voice a hoarse whisper. She reaches her drink now. Vodka tastes like nothing but it burns the whole way down and that she likes.

“I was going to say ‘You’re Bel’.”

“Yes thank you,” she says, refusing to cry. “I’m well aware of my name. I've had it my whole life..”

“No I meant. You’re my Moneypenny."

Holding back the tears takes real work now but she manages. "How many times have I told you not to call me that. I'm not your secretary. I am your producer."

"My producer and my best friend and my Moneypenny. You’re- It’s always been you and when I thought it wasn’t, I don’t know, I let myself let it not be you.”

Enough. Just enough. A woman can only take so much. So Bel blurts, “It fidgets.” Freddie blinks at her so she clarifies, “The baby. It fidgets, like you in a theater or when you’re really thinking and you don’t even realize. It fidgets more than actually kicks. Just sort of moves around like it’s trying to get comfortable and I started a thousand letters but I couldn’t. After the one from New York- Freddie, I just couldn’t.”

There are tears in his eyes. “Are you keeping it?” he asks. “ Are you? Because, Bel, I know you want- I know you love the news, that you love it more than you’ll ever love me or any man so, I'm sure you've thought of adoption. Only Bel, don't. You can’t- You just can't-“

She turns and slaps him, back-handed so hard his head snaps to the side. “You do not get to tell me what I can and cannot do. Not now, not ever. Do you hear me Freddie Lyon? Never. Of course I’m keeping it, not that its any of your bloody business. I’m almost twenty-nine years old and you, as you just made clear, are married. So yes, I am. We can discuss your role in it’s life when you are less drunk and I am less furious.”

He rubs his face with a hand. There are tears in his eyes but Bel doesn’t think they have anything to do with the pain of the blow. 

“Is that where you were?” she asks, riding high on the anger, “Before you came here? Telling your wife that the woman you fucked on the living room floor the night of your father’s funeral is pregnant? Is that why you had to do this later?”

“Yes,” Freddie says and goddamn him. God damn him for his honesty and his earnestness and the tears that slide down his face when his blinks. “Of course it was. I couldn’t come here with that between us. It’s not fair to her and it’s certainly not fair to you.” He takes one of her hands in both of hers. “Bel, do you want me to leave Camille?”

Bel sets her mug down and takes a long thoughtful pull of her fag. “I think the more important question is if you want to leave her.”

“I love her,” he says in a very small voice.

“Well,” she says, “There you go then, don’t you?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? You just told me you love her.”

“I do. I do love her but Bel, I've loved you so much for so long that I can’t actually remember who or what I am without loving you. Being in love with Camille is something I’m doing. That’s real but Moneypenny, being in love with you is something I am. There’s not really any competition between the two.”

“Damn you, James,” She chokes out. That’s not fair. How is she supposed to deal with that? Live with that? “I can’t do this.”

“I know. I have to talk to Camille but- I love you. I'm in love with you. You knew that already but I am, I was, and I rather think I always shall be.”

Bel nods. She wont hang her future on that but it’s something. She takes the hands he holds them and brings them to her stomach. The baby is fidgeting so she presses their hands against the curve and holds them there. It takes a minute but she can see it the moment Freddie feels it, the flutter of life under his skin. 

His whole face lights up like she’s only seen when he finds and breaks the greatest of stories. His tears are back but he’s smiling his beautiful smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes and stretching his mouth wide. “Oh Moneypenny. You really can do anything can’t you?"

“One does what one can,” she agrees, rubbing the back of his hand with her own. 

“I made a commitment. We both know I can't just back out of that and she didn't leave. So much of me wishes she had. It’d be so much easier. We could-“ He stops, swallows, then shakes his head. “But she hasn’t. She hasn’t left me and things…they’re not good.”

“We’ll figure things out.”

“We will.” He agrees. This is a right mess but they have to. Don’t they?

~*~*~

Camille is lovely. Of course she is. Freddie would never marry a troll or a hag or some sort of vapid brat. She’s clever and good with people even if she doesn’t understand the why Ian Fleming is brilliant. She gathers information, she translates, and she is gentle with Bel.

“It’s not as if he knew me when you were together, did he?” That is so very French of Camille when Cilenti leaves the origami swan in her flat and she runs to Freddie’s. It’s so French and so kind that she can’t help but laugh. 

She’s a revolutionary at heart, Camille, which is obviously what Freddie saw in her. She sees what’s happening with NATO and she wants to do something and she wants Freddie to be there in the fight with her. She also wants him to be something he simply can’t be. She wants him to be a nine-to-five man with a job in an office who can come home at the end of the day to join her in shared passions and leave work at work. 

That Camille tells her she’s leaving, and not Freddie, it’s massive. It’s everything. “Look after him. It’s what he wants. Make sure he looks after you too, and the little one. It’s what you both want.” Then she leans forward and kisses Bel on the cheek. “I’ll be in touch.”

Later that day, Freddie punches the wall over Cilenti and the Soho crime wave but when she tells him, about Camille, he barely blinks. He just sags as he tells her about their fighting, how Camille thinks that all he cares about nothing but the story and her; though he doesnt say that he agrees with her aloud his eyes say he agrees with that.

The experience puts Bel back in her apartment and he’s telling her that loving Camille is what he does and loving her is who he is. Dead air hangs between them until at least Freddie turns from the wall and says “I don’t think Camille is coming back. God help me, Bel, I don’t want her to. I want her to stay gone so that it can be you and and I and the baby and the Hour. Does that make me a terrible person?”

“I dont know,” she admits, "I hope not as I'd like that as well and no one likes to be a bad person, do they?" He’s kissing her in the next instant, moving so quickly across the space between them its almost like magic. This is the first time his lips have touched hers in almost nine months, different this time. There’s no sadness in this kiss. There’s desperation, passion, love, want and rush but there’s no sadness except perhaps at all the things that got in their way. He is glowing as he pauses to pull back and look at her for a brief moment before kissing her again.

When they break for air, there is a letter on her desk, a letter on rough paper in a woman's handwriting that rocks Bel to her core from Rosa, and back down the rabbit hole they go. Bel feels torn in half - destroyed over how badly she failed Rosa, how she got that poor girl, and how right the actual journalism feels. The loss is acute but Cilenti and Tuffnel and Castlecorp and the complete mess of organized crime in central London and nuclear arms are ripe for the plucking. 

In the scant hours outside of Lime Grove studios, time in stolen in her apartment with Freddie, the next week is amazing. They have very awkward, clumsy sex and laugh through it because of how big she is, how unwieldy the process but she comes so hard she very nearly goes blind. Before his orgasm, he tells her she’s beautiful, brilliant, brighter than the sun and means it. He mouths over the back of her neck and down her spine because she is too huge to make love face to face and kiss her mouth. Of course Freddie finds another way that is it's own bliss and he bites her shoulder when at the end of the first round, where her blouse is sure to cover. The second time rolls his hips, in and in and in and in and she’s coming again, her fingers tangled with his. Bel throws her head back onto his shoulder shouts yes because this is her apartment and Freddie is inside her, making her come a third time. 

In the afterglow, they curl together like kittens. He cradles his arms around her stomach, stroking like it’s a pet. “I hope it has your ever so even ears,” he whispers and they both burst into giggles. This, Bel, thinks, is how it should have always been.

Her water breaks during the live shooting of the Hour with Freddie missing and Kiki deLane as their star guest. Isaac nearly breaks his nek slipping on it and when he looks down at the fluid on the floor, then up at the stain on Bel’s skirt he makes a small strangled noise. “Miss Rowley,” he gasps.

“Isaac, fetch a mop, quietly, and clean that up. We’ve still got another thirty eight-minutes to fill.” If she were more dramatic, she would blame it on the fact the stress of knowing that a known criminal has Freddie. However, her water broke before Kiki told her so Bel scolds herself for the absurdity and when she gets back to the booth she lights a new fag with shaking fingers as Hector shows the first photograph to the camera.

Her contractions are about nine minutes apart when Mr. Brown tells her that the police are on their way to Freddie. She’s got a stopwatch in her hand to keep check. The knowledge helps her embrace the fact that this all real even as it makes her want to weep. When it’s a wrap, she's down to eight minutes and sagging against the nearest desk. Keeping her voice calm, she turns to Sissy. “Sissy, call an ambulance please. Now.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Sissy doesn’t walk, she runs. A heartbeat later, Hector is at her elbow, holding her upright because he knows that she would never want to be seen as weak so she’d rather remain standing and he helps her do that. “Come now, Bel,” he says, “Just a bit of a punch.”

A spasm of pain ricochets across her lower back, tightening so sharply that she can’t breathe before it lets go. Holy god it hurts. When she can speak again she grits out “Not to mince words, Hector, but fuck you.”

He laughs, loud and long and kisses her, full on the mouth, right there at work in front of everyone, like he would a sister or a cousin, closed mouth and friendly, ending with a loud smack. He helps her walk to the ambulance and holds her hand for the ride there and then through the hospital until the nurses bar him from maternity. He only lets go because they pull his fingers free. She's glad Hector is there but she wants Freddie. He's not here for the most important moment in both their lives. If she thought it would make a difference, she'd protest. Only knowing there's no sense in it stops her. 

“Deep breath now, Miss Rowley. That’s it,” the doctor tells her from behind as he places a gas mask over her face. “Count backwards from a 100. When you wake up, you’ll have a beautiful bundle of joy all your own.”

She gets to ninety-six before she blacks out and when she wakes up, Lix is in the room, holding her baby. With her is Sissy, Sey, and Marnie Madden of all people. Lix gives her a smile so gentle Bel feels suddenly made of glass. “Hello, sweetheart. Would you like to meet your little girl?”

“Oh, yes,” she breathes holding out both arms and then the squirming bundle is put in her arms. “Hello Ruth,” she says to the stunning, gorgeous infant writhing in her eyes and looking up at her with bright curiosity in an angular face that is all Freddie. It sets her looking for him, for Freddie. It has to be him next who holds her. It's the next right thing that must happen on earth. “Ruth, Freddie. Is that all right? I know you loved her so- Freddie?”

Sey is the one to speak now. He clears his throat three times before he’s able to do so. “Mr. Lyon was attacked, Miss Rowley. He was left outside the studio, not long after you arrived here at the hospital." He is gentle with his doctorly manner and yes. Yes she knew that Cilenti had him. Through the fog of medicine she's remembering but she'd hoped it wasn't that bad. She'd wanted it not to be that bad. "Mr. Madden, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Wengrow are with him now.”

“But he’s all right,” Marnie says, trying to be helpful. “Hector says he’ll be all right. Intensive Care Unit’s where they put everyone with breathing problems. That’s all.”

The anesthesia is fading. It’s fading fast as Lix breaks down what happened. Beaten bloody, left for dead on the lawn of Lime Grove studios. Broken ribs, damage to his lungs, liver, spleen and his face - broken cheek bone, nose, and eye socket. Bel holds Ruth to her breast and tries to breathe. He hasn’t even seen her, his daughter. She wonders if he could open his eyes if she were right in front of him.

“He needs to meet her,” Bel says, adamant. “Freddie. He needs to see Ruth.”

“He will,” Sissy says. “Don’t you worry, Miss Rowley. He’ll get better and see her in no time.”

Bel looks at Lix because she knows that Bel means now, right bloody now. This very instant. Sey gets it too because he vanishes and returns with a wheel chair. He carefully lifts her out of bed, baby and all, and settles them in the chair. 

“We’re staging a break out,” Lix declares. “Sissy, into bed with you. Turn away and pull the covers up. We'll be back in a bit.

"This is exciting," Sissy practically coos as she toes off her shoes and climbs into the hospital bed. "Just like in the movies."

"Marnie guard the door.”

"I really don't know if I should-" begins Marnie but Lix cuts her off. 

“Wasn’t a question dear.” And with that she’s off, wheeling the two of them down the hall and off to Intensive Care. 

Hector isn’t surprised in the least to see her though Isaac looks shocked and is therefor kicked out of the room. “Don’t get your hopes up,” Hector warns. “He’s been sleeping since he arrived. Can’t blame the poor bastard. Cilenti made a terrible mess of him. He’s lucky to be alive.” He sighs heavily, then looks over at Bel and smiles. “And is that little Rowley? Boy or girl?”

“Girl. She’s looking like a Ruth right now,” Lix tells him and thank god for that because Bel cant tear her eyes off Freddie. 

"Smashing. Can't wait to properly meet her. I'm off to get cigars now that everyone's safe and settled."

Bel barely hears Hector when he leaves. Freddie looks like ground beef. He’s covered in plasters and sutures and wrapped up in gauze. She could kill Cilenti, kill him with her bare hands for doing this. Murder him in cold blood. What she says is, “Has anyone called Camille?”

“Yes. Isaac called her,” Mr. Brown says. “She said she’d be back in a week but knew he’d be fine with you here. I dont think they’re on anymore, if you don’t mind me saying Miss Rowley.”

That makes everything easy, simple. She waves the hand not clutching Ruth, because her child will be Ruth she’s sure now, and Lix wheels her forward until she can hold Freddie’s unbroken hand and put her face right up beside his.

“Freddie, come on love, wake up. She’s here. Your daughter. She’s right here.” She takes their laced fingers and strokes them over her downey head and over her cheek. “I’m calling her Ruth, after Ruth Elms? I thought you might like that and, you know, she changed us all, changed everything, deserves to be remembered so, Ruth. Ruth Isabel Lyon - a bit of you and a bit of me.”

He stirs a little. Probably from the pain but she runs their joined fingers over Ruth’s cheek. “Ruth wants to meet her daddy, Freddie. Wake up for me now. Come on.”

She keeps on like that, talking and talking for hours, pausing when Ruth starts to cry. She looks down at her daughter in confusion and Lix says, “She’s hungry, sweetheart." Lix glances around the room, at the throng of men, clears her throat and declares, "And with that, out." She puts her hand on Mr. Brown's shoulder to gently guide him from the room. "Some things are not for gentlemen's eyes."

That’s odd, pulling down and aside the hospital gown so that Ruth can reach her breast. It hurts a bit and then it doesn’t. Then it’s good, right. She settles back in the wheelchair and relaxes, letting her body take control as she feeds her child. It’s almost perfect. Almost. Now if Freddie would just-

“Moneypenny,” he rasps, “What on earth are you doing?”

“Breastfeeding your spawn,” she snaps but there is absolutely no bite in it. “Apparently she decided she was tired of waiting for you to wake up and demanded a snack.” She carefully disengages her baby from her breast much to Ruth’s displeasure and moves so that he can see her. 

He can only really open one eye but its fixed on the infant. “She? It’s a girl?”

“Yes. And since you weren’t there to give an opinion since you ran off like a bloody idiot, I decided on Ruth. Ruth Isabel Lyon. What do you think? She’s a bit lumpy at the moment but I think she came out all right.”

“I think so,” he agrees. “And the name’s perfect. My two favorite women. Three now.” He smiles then stops when it clearly pains him and reaches out to stroke Ruth’s face then Bel’s instead. “I made it back to you, Moneypenny. Didn’t I?”

“You did. Good thing too. I’d’ve hated to have to bring you back to life just to kill you again.”

“Too right,” he murmurs, hand dropping back to Ruth’s soft skin as he drifts off.

He’ll heal and Ruth will grow. Camille is a kind woman, smart and fair and when they ask, she'll send the divorce papers she and Freddie will need, but not today. Today, she has her baby girl snuggled against her solid and soft and Freddie's hand warm and alive in hers. For now that's all she needs.


End file.
